INDUSTRIES 



these works for the purpose of making leather 

 guns, and they were subsequently held by a 

 Scotsman, Colonel Wemyss.^ 



In 1645 some part of these works, con- 

 sisting of sixteen rooms and workshops, in 

 addition to his own private rooms, were occu- 

 pied by John Bishop, who is described as 

 ' engineer and overseer of all the instruments 

 of war made, moulded and contrived in Faux- 

 hall ' by virtue of an order of the Committee 

 for Safety of 14 June 1643. The contents 

 of these workshops show that they were 

 mainly utilized for the production of guns, 

 muskets and carbines. Another part of the 

 works, the boring room and the melting 

 room, had been utilized since the king went 

 away by William Lambert, the gunfounder. 

 Other rooms contained a variety of models, 

 such as models of ammunition waggons, of 

 breech-charging guns, of a freestone to cast 

 saker shot in, of fortifications, of ships' decks 

 contrived to entrap men who came aboard, 

 and the like. The models of a waggon to go 

 without horses and of a boat to go by itself 

 against stream and tide strike one as pre- 

 mature, whilst 'the wooden model for a 

 perpetual motion' is anticipatory of many 

 later attempts to solve a still unsolved 

 problem. Into the brick house which had 

 been built for the manufacture of leather 

 guns the surveyors could not gain an entry 

 owing to the refusal of Colonel Wemyss to 

 part with the key. 



After the Restoration Charles II. granted 

 a lease of Vauxhall to Henry Lord Moore, 

 afterwards Earl of Drogheda, with power of 

 resumption upon a proper allowance being 

 made if his Majesty should think fit to make 

 use of the house or any part of it. This 

 power was exercised the year after this lease 

 was granted, and a Dutchman, Jasper 

 CalthoiF, was settled at Vauxhall and em- 

 ployed in making guns and other warlike 

 implements for the king's service. Appa- 

 rently this manufacture was not long con- 

 tinued, for a few years afterwards we are told 

 that part of the premises were occupied by a 

 sugar baker, and in 1675 Sir Samuel Mor- 

 land obtained a lease of the house and made 

 it his residence.* 



In connection with the manufacture of 

 ordnance we may notice here two or three 

 manufactories of shot in Southwark and Lam- 

 beth. The Southwark shot tower was in the 

 parish of Christ Church, and is described by 

 Manning and Bray ^ (18 14) as a slender tall 



' Land Rev. Enrolments, cxiii. 77. 



2 Lysons, Environs of London (ed. l), i. 322. 



3 Hist. ofSurr. iii. 536. 



brick tower for the manufacture of lead shot 

 under a patent. A patent had been granted 

 on 29 June 1758 to Henry Raminger of 

 Christ Church, Surrey, for certain 'engines 

 or machines whereby shots commonly used 

 for fowling and bullets of lead are made more 

 exactly round, solid and to much greater per- 

 fection than hath hitherto been practised.' * 



The manufactory for making patent shot 

 near Waterloo Bridge in Lambeth was estab- 

 lished about the year 1789 by Messrs. Watts. 

 The principle of making the shot was to let 

 it fall from a great height into water, thereby 

 allowing it to cool and harden sufficiently to 

 prevent its receiving any pressure on falling 

 into the water. In the manufacture of ordi- 

 nary shot wc are told the metal fell scarcely 

 a yard before touching the water and lost in 

 consequence some of its spherical shape. The 

 height of the Lambeth tower was about 140 

 feet from the ground to the top of the turret, 

 and the shot fell 123^ feet.^ In 1826 this 

 manufactory was in the possession of Messrs. 

 Walker, Parker & Co.," under which style 

 it continues to be carried on at the present 

 day, and a new shot factory was being erected 

 in the Belvedere Road, which when finished 

 was to be considerably higher than its neigh- 

 bour.'' The patent shot tower at Lambeth 

 is still one of the most conspicuous landmarks 

 on the Surrey side of the Thames. 



Copper is another of the metals that have 

 at one time or another been worked within 

 the county. Here again the first to be men- 

 tioned in connection with the industry are of 

 foreign birth. Mark Bennyman or Bena- 

 mon — the name is spelt in various ways — 

 who was living in St. George's parish in 

 Southwark in May 1571, and is then stated 

 to have been in England for twenty years, is 

 described as a coppersmith, and was a Flem- 

 ing, having been born in Brabant.* In 1583 

 he was resident in St. George's,' and is called 

 elsewhere ' Marcus Copersmith alias Bynny- 

 man.' *" He is no doubt the ' Marck the cop- 

 persmith ' in Southwark in 1586." Other 

 alien coppersmiths in Southwark in the latter 

 part of the sixteenth century were Simon 

 Percey, a Norman, aged seventy-three in 

 November 1571, when he was then living in 

 St. Olave's, and was declared to have been 

 in England for fifty-three years," and John 



* Pat. of Invention, No. 725. 



5 Lysons, Environs of London (ed. i), i. 318. 



« Allen, Hist, of Lambeth, 313. 



' Ibid. 308. 



8 Kirk, Returns of Aliens, etc. i. 466. 



9 Ibid. ii. 332. »» Ibid. ii. 333. 

 " Ibid. ii. 402. " Ibid. ii. 107. 



4T3 



